Posted on 06/26/2009 4:15:44 PM PDT by NoobRep
Wayne Trotter 26.JUN.09 Passing President Obama’s “cap and trade” energy program would cost the average Oklahoma family $3,200 a year, Sen. Jim Inhofe said Friday, but he’s confident the measure will be killed in the Senate no matter what happens in the House of Representatives.
The Tulsa Republican, a longtime critic of what he considers “this hoax called global warming,” made his latest statements during a morning stop in Shawnee while House members in Washington were preparing to vote on the controversial issue.
“Between the years of 1998 and 2005, I was the only member of the United States Senate who would take on what I call ‘the Hollywood elitists’ and the United Nations on this hoax called global warming and I went through seven years of purgatory on that issue.
“But now I’ve been redeemed and the vast majority of the scientific community has now said Inhofe’s right and the United Nations is wrong and those individuals … have now said ‘no, the science is not there and these are natural cycles.”
At the time of the interview Friday morning, he said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was only two votes short of winning and predicted that if she brought the question up for a vote, it would indicate she had found them.
“It doesn’t matter,” he declared flatly, “because we’ll kill it in the Senate anyway.”
Asked if he was confident that would be the case, Oklahoma’s senior senator said he was “absolutely certain.” He noted that it would take 60 votes to break an anticipated Republican filibuster over cap and trade and predicted the most the Democrats can muster is about 34.
He said all the hubbub in the House was over Pelosi’s desire to attend a conference in Copenhagen and be able to stand up and say, “Oh, we’ve passed this out of the House and we’re going to lead the way in America but it’s not going to pass the Senate.”
Inhofe said the bill, if passed, would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of the country.
He scoffed at Democratic claims that “cap and trade” doesn’t represent a tax increase at all but instead is a free enterprise solution.
“MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the Wharton School of Economics came out with an analysis of what this is. They said that the range is between $330 and $350 billion a year. That translates in Oklahoma to $3,200 per family. Everyone who’s reading this story right now, that would be a tax increase of over $3,000 per family. I can give you all the documentation on that.”
Inhofe said Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, tried to “rip me up” on the Senate floor only Thursday night and I said, “In your state of Massachusetts, there’s an innocuous organization called MIT. Are you familiar with that?” Then, he said, he read what the MIT analysis had to say.
He also said Oklahoma would be among the most affected states. “Losing states would be primarily Oklahoma and Texas,” he observed, producing a color-coded map. One of the winning states, he said, would be California.
Changing the subject, Inhofe called the vote on what he called the “bailout bill” last fall probably will go down as one of the most egregious votes of all time. “In know this is unpopular to say because my own junior citizen voted for it,” he commented in reference to his fellow Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn.
But, he said, cap and trade will be worse because it would come to the same amount of money every year.
He also criticized the Obama administration for moves to integrate gun control with international treaties on grounds that crimes committed in Mexico are done with guns manufactured in the United States.
Inhofe called health care a serious issue but said it’s hard to talk about because there’s no written document on either the Obama or Kennedy plans. Regardless, he said, it’s clear that the proposed changes would put the government between the patient and doctor and would be based on the Canadian system. “That’s about all you can say,” he concluded.
He repeated his intention to vote against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court but acknowledge that she will be confirmed, quoting Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, as saying Republicans are afraid to vote against her because she’s a woman and she’s Hispanic.
“I’m not,” Inhofe said without hesitation. “I’m going to be voting against her.”
Inhofe said he was in Shawnee as part of a program to “take one day a week when we’re not voting” and stopping in different parts of the state. The interview with The Countywide & Sun was conducted in Bill Ford’s office at Shawnee Mills. After leaving Shawnee, he said, he planned to fly to Ada, Lawton and the Weatherford-Clinton area.
State Representatives Kris Steele of Shawnee and Shane Jett of Tecumseh, both Republicans, were on hand for the interview. Inhofe signed photographs for both.
It just passed with 219 votes...
We must punish every Republican who votes yes today.
Boo-Yah! Make it so! :)
If it’s going to die in the Senate, might as well kill it in the House before it gets there, right?
OMG. How did it end up with TWO more losers than the ‘test’ vote this AM?????? WTF.
These people suck beyond all recognition.
We are ovah, it has passed the House.
I will never bother to vote again if it passes the Senate.
We need a list of the 8 Republicans who voted yes. If they had not, it would not have passed.
Certain FBI files will come into play when it’s time to vote in the Senate.
One is probably my own Mary Bono Mack who has been getting hell from many of us here. She will be gone in 2010.
I never thought I’d say this, but that woman definitely should listen to her husband (Connie Mack).
I am beyond disgusted.
Did Connie Mack vote the right way?!?
I just called Bono’s office in Hemet, CA and gave her representative an earful.
I pray you will be able to make that choice! If you CAN, you SHOULD!!!
Go for it!This is a free for all.Swing the hammer.
Good God I hope and pray!
But really, I have a “gut feeling” that the House was our best shot at defeating this. After all, the Senate is where the “gang of 14” was hatched, among many other RINO hairbrained schemes!
Ugh.
Now the Republicans are declaring victory on talk shows for making it close. Just like with the stimulus. Swell.
My Atlanta Braves would be remembered as a terrific team for losing all those World Series, rather than a gang of chokers, if this was the standard.
Without even bothering to look, I am going to say yes he did. He almost always does.
He married down.
How so? Not one house republican voted for the porkulus bill. Three RINO's voted for it in the senate. I am sure even more RINO's will vote for this. The GOP isn't going to get enough votes to stop this.
Lets include democrats who voted yes.
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